The home healthcare industry is on an accelerated growth trajectory. Globally, the numbers are expected to exceed US$662.67 billion by 2027, an increase of 14.2 Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) from 2021 1 , with the United States maintaining a stronghold on the market. Perceived as a more affordable and convenient alternative to the treatment and care received at a hospital or skilled nursing facility, home healthcare offers several advantages – diagnostic workups, specialized medical treatments, special needs care, chronic illness care, senior citizens’ care, mobility assistance, and more.
While the advantages and the possibilities are virtually limitless, the industry is not without its challenges. Following are some of the challenges that home healthcare providers struggle with:
⮚ With the number of senior citizens and patients suffering from chronic conditions constantly on the rise, the need for a more financially sustainable and convenient alternative to hospitalization and assisted facilities is on the rise. Keeping up with this demand for an industry that is constantly evolving is not easy.
⮚ Finding and retaining skilled nurses and medical practitioners in a new medical construct that still stands at a perceptional crossroads of medical care and general needs care is a challenge that most home healthcare agencies face.
⮚ With the lines between home healthcare and the general needs of the individual still a little blurred, home healthcare providers struggle to market and brand themselves appropriately.
⮚ The home healthcare space may have evolved to a large extent after coming under the aegis of Obamacare. However, in a space that still largely remains unregulated, keeping up with standards and depending on customer star ratings for business success is a challenge.
⮚ The medical field is a constantly evolving one. With home healthcare providers being required to provide the latest equipment on-demand and with their need to maintain all records in easily accessible systems, keeping up can prove to be a challenge.
⮚ In a new market, the low availability of inexpensive software platforms and systems almost immediately translates into manual paperwork and the burden of administrative work.
⮚ Home healthcare has been pitched as a more affordable alternative to hospitalization and assisted care. Sustaining cost of operations while projecting the USP of affordability does not come easy.
⮚ The low availability of affordable software systems also means that caregivers and care receivers do not have anywhere, anytime visibility or access to health records and patient data.
⮚ Home healthcare is patient-centric, which means that the caregivers need to facilitate and coordinate medical care from different specialties, physicians and medical practitioners as per the patients’ needs / health conditions.
⮚ The lack of a comprehensive and single-pane view into patient records could also translate into the inability of the caregiver to facilitate regular updates/feedback.
⮚ The point of creating medical records and EMRs is to be able to access them anytime and anywhere and easily recover them when required, even in the face of disaster.
⮚ For any business model to prove sustainable and successful, constant monitoring and measurement of all parameters is crucial to providing a comprehensive view of the care being delivered. Only then can the home healthcare provider quantify and qualify the quality of care being provided.
Miter Health is a transformation partner and a leading provider of customized, cloud-based, and innovative platforms and software solutions. We can partner with you in your journey of facilitating top-notch home healthcare services to those in need. While you hone your focus and success story in the field, we will create a strong tech-driven, secure, and scalable solution in the background that will help you evolve and grow ahead of your competition.
If you are looking for more information on how we can streamline your workflows, increase your efficiencies, and improve the quality of care, get in touch with us at https://miterhealth.com/get-in-touch/ or call on (615) 619-3000 to request a demo or an in-person meeting.
